


The Worst Coping Mechanisms Known To Man

by sadifura



Category: Street Fighter
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 18:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadifura/pseuds/sadifura
Summary: Dan's given up on therapy, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need it.





	The Worst Coping Mechanisms Known To Man

**Author's Note:**

> euughghh just a bad vent fic exploring dan's attempts to cope with his mental stuff and his inability to completely do so sometimes

Coping

 

Dan walks around his house about five times.

It’s not some sort of compulsive thing. He’s doing it because he has to.

“One, two, three…”

After all, if you don’t think at all, the Satsui no Hado will go away. The revenge potential that Gouken warned him about before he was excommunicated----that’s what will go away.

“Four, five, six…”

It’s hard being an intellectual genius like Dan Hibiki. Constantly, there are thoughts running in your brain when you’re like that, and none of those thoughts are good thoughts. “It’s a communication disorder,” the psychiatrist said to you shortly before you tried to join Gouken. “It’s in the nature of one with a communication disorder to obsess and obsess and obsess.” Dan never really gave it much thought when he told him this. But sometimes, lying awake at night, he’d start to think the psychiatrist was right.

“Seven, eight, nine…”

Now for the sit-ups. Don’t think about that stupid psychiatry shit, Dan says to himself, putting his hands behind his back and pushing his head up and down.

“I haven’t been...to a psychiatrist….in months!” he grunts, boasting it as a proof of “recovery”, of proof of his strength. See?! He hasn’t needed therapy! He’s ditched all those sessions because his brain isn’t a mess and it’s not barely held together with glia and synapses and thoughts of absolutely murdering Sagat until he doesn’t have any eyes! “Wait a second…” he mutters out loud, “isn’t me having angry fantasies about ripping people’s eyes, like, a bad thing,” he asks himself, in a lapse of over-thinking. “Shut up!” he shouts at himself, “you know thinking about stuff is bad!” OK. Sit-ups are done. Sit-ups are probably making me think, he thinks to himself. Now onto raking the leaves.

The yard was full of mess; leaves, sticks, animal poop that neighbors neglected to clean off his lawn, the works. “Gotta get a bag for this,” says, grabbing a couple convenience store bags he’s hoarded for occasions like these. He picks up the animal crap and throws it away. “Now, onto the leaves.” He mumbles. 

And then he remembers.

It’s triggered by nothing, he thinks, but deep down he knows it’s probably a thought he’s suppressed for the entire day. “Shit!” 

Dan, in his black T-shirt and stained pink sweatpants, collapses into the leaves. He chokes back sobs as he picks himself up and decides to go inside. No productivity for you, failure, he chastises. You stupid sonuva-mother. 

He sits down on the spare kotatsu Sakura bought him with her college money. It still has the card stuck to it, a cute happy note written in text speak.

“Dammit!” he cries out! “Why does it have to be like this! I’m supposed to be the world’s number one---the Saikyo one! Not---not some idiot poor guy who can barely afford rent and cable!” He grabs a coffee mug and smashes it on his hand. Yeah, it hurt. Yeah, it was stupid. But he didn’t care; he wanted nothing but to scream at everyone and break everything in his house. 

“Why am I like this?! Why aren’t I as good as that blonde prettyboy Ken?! Why can’t I be loved and married already?!”

He looks down at his bleeding palm. 

“Why...can’t I be with my dad again....?”

He lays down on the floor. Screw the kotatsu; someone like him didn’t deserve it.

He feels the dull sting of his bleeding palms. “Why can’t I get scars from something cool at least…” he mumbles. “Why can’t I get a scar from like, a rampaging tiger or a demon or like a mega big awesome martial artist? Why do I have to do stupid things like this and give myself my own?”

The best answer he could give was “to look cool”. After all, a cool martial artist worth his salt has to give himself a few painful scars. Didn’t matter if it was from punching himself in the eye, or Sakura giving him a straight Hadouken to the gut, or Jimmy nearly eating his arm, or from shoving glass into his arm, or if it was from….

“Dammit, I don’t wanna think about that right now.”

He looked at his self-inflicted wound. “Yuck.”

He’s given himself worse scars, but this one hit a few veins. Least it wasn’t his good hand, he thought. He got up and got the bandages from his room and wrapped gauze around his hand. If Sakura or Jimmy ever stopped by, he could tell ‘em that he just shattered glass trying to perfect his super awesome moves or something. They’d believe him. “Stupid Dan!” they probably think. All his friends think he’s stupid, all two of them.  
“This was the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, Dan Hibiki,” he says to himself, and tries to find another distraction.

Fortunately, for the worn out man, that distraction was sleep. 

Even if he didn’t have the best of days sometimes, he could just sleep it off. 

He huddles under his kotatsu and closes his eyes.

“You really need therapy,” was the last thing he said to himself before he went to sleep.


End file.
